WOMEN'S LAND RIGHTS AND THE CHALLENGE OF
PATRlACHY: LESSONS FROM OZALLA COMMUNITY, EDO
STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Every community of people has its cultural and
economic life rooted in the soil it occupies. The term
land may take on a physical as well as a spiritual
meaning. Land is a major production resource and
lack of control over this important resource has
constituted a limiting factor to women's productivity
in rural Nigeria. It is not customary for women to
own land as this is a male dominated society where
patriarchy is practl."ced. Women's access to land
depends on marriage and they retain access to land
as long as they remain in their husband's
household. Surpnsingly, women rarely speak and
hardly perceive the inequalities in the division of
labour in agriculture because they are culturally
legitimized. Yet lack of accessibility to land has
created increased poverty, frustration, constant
disputes and enmity between men and women. The
situation has also become oven uhelming, bearing in
mind the fact that a greater population of women
and children, the vulnerable in society reside and
find their livelihood in the rural areas. Also, women
contribute more in tenns of food p roduction for the
family. Ironically, women suffer more due to land
deprivation and discriminatory cultural practices
just as their contribution to the sustenance and
persistence of ru ral agriculture is neglected due to
male bias. This paper therefore examines women's
land rights and the challenge of patriarchy in Ozalla
community, in a bid to guarantee gender equity and
social justice by reducing the level of discrimination
and ensuring that women have rights to fertile
agricultural land so as to arrest to an appreciable
extent the food crisis in the countnJ by improving their production 011tp11t cmd ens11ring higher
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